My body is a great disappointment.

With each birthday I become more aware of the fact that my body is wearing out and there is little, if anything, I can do to stop it. I bathe and lotion it but the skin still grows wrinkles. The ears and eyes require the help of devices to work in any kind of useful way. The joints, they must be getting rusty as they don’t seem to move like they used to. And the mind…well, let’s not even go there.

Maybe it wouldn’t seem so bad if I didn’t remember how it used to be, but I do remember so I just have to deal with it.

I remember something else besides the “joy of my youth”. I remember the foolishness of it and I remember the Lord’s protection through all those years. Even before I could count myself among the righteous, He was watching over me, keeping me for the day when He would claim me as His own.

I remember the recollections of Nehemiah, “You, in Your great compassion, Did not forsake them in the wilderness; The pillar of cloud did not leave them by day, To guide them on their way, Nor the pillar of fire by night, to light for them the way in which they were to go. You gave Your good Spirit to instruct them, Your manna You did not withhold from their mouth, And You gave them water for their thirst”. (Nehemiah 9:19-20)

Their Teacher has been crucified and buried, they worried they would be next. Their grief was nearly unbearable. Never had they felt so alone and fearful. It was then, as Matthew tells us in his gospel, that Jesus came to the eleven with these words: “lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20b)

The world is always changing. Our lives may change. Our bodies certainly change. But God’s love never changes. What He did for His children in the wilderness, what Jesus did for the eleven, He is doing and will continue always to do for us, even to the ends of the age.

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